A recent meeting with thoroughbred industry specialists at work had me thinking.  What about local equine organisations and business relationships?  Do you have complimenting horse businesses that may be able to help you to promote your services or product?  And also perhaps gather new clients?

The Australian government has incentives for employees with staff who undertake traineeships.  This is relevant to the horse industry in Australia.  And so, a state wide breeding organisation is partnering up with educational institutions to promote it.  They make it known to breeders in their organisation that managers can get staff qualified in an appropriate course and they will also receive a government benefit.

The breeding organisation wins by upskilling and qualifying people in the industry.  They promote particular educational institutions that can provide the training and qualification.  The educational institution wins by gaining new students/clients for horse courses.  It’s a win/win situation for both.

Local Equine Organisations and Business Relationships

Have you considered how local organisations may help you to build up your horse business?  Maybe local riding schools could be approached by an establishing farrier.  Educational institutions could reach out to local equine businesses about students gaining practical experience.  The local pony club could talk to horse businesses about coming in and teaching theory for their riders.  Local equine organisations should work together to create complimentary business relationships.  Surely it will only help the equine industry as a whole.

‘Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane? Do you make him leap like a locust, striking terror with his proud snorting? He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength, and charges into the fray. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing; he does not shy away from the sword. The quiver rattles against his side, along with the flashing spear and lance. In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground; he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.’ – Job 39:19-25

Recently I came across the Easy Wormer website when looking up information regarding rotation of wormers and active ingredients.   One of the first search engine results brought me to the Easy Wormer site.  Now it seems that these guys have taken a horse product – worming pastes – and added a brilliant level of customer service.

Not only are they offering products for sale, they are also able to guide you on which product would best suit your horse.  This is based on class (e.g. gelding, broodmare, aged horse) and whether the horse is mature or still growing.  When you identify the category your horse fits into, you are then shown a recommended worming schedule.  This is based on worming seasonally and rotating the active ingredient of the wormer.  Generally this is between the Mectin group and BZ group.  Using this information, you see which products of Easy Wormer are recommended for your horse.  And you learn at what time of the year to administer them.

Easy Wormer Packages

Now going one step further, these guys have set various packages on each class of horse.  Once you know what to buy, you are then guided to being able to make a purchase for one, two or more horses.  The more you buy, the greater the discount.  What a great idea!

But wait, it gets better.  Firstly you put in your order and make your payment.  Then Easy Wormer go to the trouble of sending you out the particular paste/s that are due for a specific season.  They do so each season and email a reminder a couple of weeks before you’re due to worm your horse.

So if you buy a year’s worth of worming products, then you will be sent out the appropriate wormer/s for each season as a reminder to keep your horse protected.  How cool is that?  I love this idea – such considerate customer service to really help sell a simple but vital health care product.

Recently I was contacted by one of the founders of Horsely to see if I might receive a product from them in exchange for a review.  Now when it comes to books, my answer is always a yes.  However, keeping in theme with Equus Education, I had to decline for these (very nice) equestrian and lifestyle products with a focus on horses.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t put together a blog post to let you know about the Horsely online horse products store, though!

According to the co-founder of Horsely, they

“aim to provide horse lover’s with high-quality, price-competitive products to meet their equestrian & lifestyle needs.”

A look at their website shows that these guys have a nice collection of horse themed items.  There are braided belts, horse watches for men and women, some gorgeous pillow covers and even horseshoe pendants.  There’s also a great range of horse related clothing.

The products vary in price with some items around $20, while others are up around the $100 mark.  Most of the horse pillow cases caught my eye – there are some beautiful images portrayed on them!

Having an online store can save you a lot of money, therefore increasing your profit margin when you make a sale.  You don’t have to hire store space and pay someone to be in the store for a set number of hours.  Instead, you can set up an online process that automatically deals with orders.  Then they just need to be packaged and posted to the person who has already paid for them.

Of course, there is the added cost for buyers of paying for shipping.  And they need to know about your site to find it online in the first place.  But with some clever marketing, hosting a website for an online store could be quite lucrative.  Of course, you would need to store your products somewhere for when people purchase them.  So this would need to be catered to.

Then again, if you sold digital products… You know, horse courses, eBooks and the like, then you wouldn’t need to pay for storage at all!  But you would be looking at the need for higher bandwidth as people download content directly from your site.